In the age of the day-glo blog rapper, B-Real has built up a tremendous amount of goodwill with '80s babies; for the aging rap head, it's hard not to look fondly on Lollapalooza-crossover rap stars who pushed 40 ounces and blunts rather than shutter shades and tight pants. Mix this ganja-tinted nostalgia with the occasional hot Cypress Hill single (2001's Lowrider), guest verse (his turn on DJ Quik's 2005 single Fandango) and mixtape (the three Gunslinger outings), and a new B-Real record should be cause for celebration.

The good news, at least for folks who used to chill in their friend's basement with the Hendrix poster and the towel under the door, is that B-Real's voice retains its perfect constipated flow, and a few of the tracks capture a classic sunny-day Cali rap feel. But the cloud of weed smoke won't disguise the truth: Smoke N Mirrors is a decidedly mixed bag.

The highs, no pun intended, are pretty worthwhile. Most importantly, B-Real's rapping is as on-point as ever; listen to his tight-chested flow when he spits "gotta hustle like Jeter, and hold my heater, in case you wanna try me, reconsider," on the Snoop-assisted Dr. Hyphenstein. His lyrics are also well-considered on a number of tracks; on the statement-of-purpose Gangsta Music he spits some smart verses about the trap of the street life, his motivation to leave it behind and his difficulties doing so, as well as offering words of encouragement to folks still out on the streets: "If you're affiliated or solo, we all want the same thang/It would be amazing if we was all in the same gang/Might get persecuted at the time, we movin to change things/It's a brain game, if we never try it's a damn shame."

Psycho Realm Revolution has B-Real reuniting with Sick Jacken for one of the album's best beats, a funky, horn-driven Cali groove that really kicks into gear with searing chorus melody. The only real weed song on the album is unsurprisingly a big highlight; Fire features a pitch-perfect Damian Marley guest verse while B-Real spits even eighths over the chugging reggae bump. Lead single Don't Ya Dare Laugh is nice enough, a dark Dr. Dre/Scott Storch-style doddering banger that interpolates, weirdly enough, 1981's Suzanne Vega hit Tom's Diner. Xzibit is a scene-stealer, while B-Real protege Young De spits one of the several generic, detached verses he drops throughout the LP.

Young De's inability to figure out 'show-don't-tell' might be more forgivable if he didn't spend his verse on the Alchemist-laced 6 Minutes clowning one-hit-wonders for being clueless. B-Real is consumed by a lack of self-awareness on this song as well; perhaps dropping a track with a repeating "where did they go?" chorus might have been a better idea if B-Real hadn't spent the last decade making old school Cypress Hill fans wonder pretty much the same thing. Then you have utterly awful stuff like Get that Dough: hook is inane, its string-laced beat is generic, the drum programming uninspired, a textbook disaster. The good tracks draw an even sharper contrast with the bad ones; you get the feeling that B-Real is perfectly capable of creating classic rap veteran records if he wanted to. Maybe this is B-Real's way of adapting to the iPod age (get_that_dough.mp3 - deleted) but this record is half sticky icky and half stems, seeds and sticks.